Saskatchewan rejects transgender rights proposal petition

REGINA, Saskatchewan, November 21, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A petition to include “gender identity” and “gender expression” to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination in the Human Rights Code in Saskatchewan was rejected yesterday.

Jack Fonseca, a spokesman for Campaign Life Coalition, was pleased with the Saskatchewan decision.

“The belief by sexually confused men that they’re really a girl trapped inside a male body, or vice versa, has always been diagnosed as a mental disorder by the psychological profession,” explained Fonseca. “What these poor people need is compassionate, psychological treatment to overcome this disorder. They don’t need a harmful law that essentially normalizes their confusion and which tends to discourage them from seeking professional help.”

CLC has fought such legislation both at the provincial and federal levels.

“Such a change in law would actually represent a lack of Christian compassion toward those affected by sexual confusion. It’s playing politics with peoples’ lives and mental health,” Fonseca added.

Opposition MLA David Forbes of the NDP brought the petition forward, saying that four provinces have already made the change.

Attorney General Gordon Wyant said that the province would not make the amendment. He said the government got input from the Ministry of Justice and the human rights chief commissioner.

"In their opinion,” Wyant said, “the existing wording does protect against discrimination with respect to this particular group."

Wyant also quoted a letter from the human rights commissioner that said the courts in Canada "consistently recognize that transgender persons are protected under the grounds of sex and/or gender."

Nova Scotia, Ontario, Manitoba, and Newfoundland, and the Northwest Territories have already amended their Human Rights codes to include “gender identity” and “gender expression” in the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination, following the lead of the federal government which is working to include these terms in the Canadian Human Rights Act.

This type of legislation, dubbed “bathroom bills”, has been opposed by many family organizations which have pointed out alarming potential outcomes, including men who call themselves transgender being permitted to be in women’s washrooms, showers, and change rooms.

“Adding those dubious terms to the code would put girls and women at greater risk from male sexual predators who could pretend to be ‘transgendered’ in order to get in close quarters with their unsuspecting victims,” Fonseca said. “It would make a perfect alibi to escape suspicion and prosecution.”

“We already have a rising problem in this country of bathroom attacks on women,” he noted. “Why would politicians want to put more men inside women’s bathrooms and change rooms?”